


Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Holmes Brothers, Implied Relationships, M/M, Prequel, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 02:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5989509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is backstory--not a first, precisely, but the sort of flashback you'd expect in a larger work as a character remembers back to particularly moving, uncomfortable moments in a long life. One might start a movie this way: the character, dying, mutters "Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5," then falls into a coma, mind drifting back to the music, and from the music to the scene. Very "Citizen Kane." </p><p>Seriously, this is a flashback to Sherlock and Mycroft and Lestrade in a rotten period right about five years prior to our first episode--around the time when Lestrade told Sally he'd first met Sherlock. Things are not good. Mycroft's POV.</p><p>The title is taken from a gorgeous, fairly well-known aria by Villa-Lobos, which has been sung by just about any classically trained vocalist who can convince herself she's up to the challenge. Even the lyrics, in English, are more mood than information--and the music itself is just aching. I recommend listening to it, if you do not know it. You can find dozens of lovely versions on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9t9qh5d2VU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5

“Shut up, Sherlock.”

Sherlock, of course, didn’t listen. Mycroft wondered in stunned, weary exhaustion whether he could listen, or if his need to force his older brother to accept his view of things made it impossible.

“I need it, Mike. Don’t you understand? I go insane without…something. It helps. It’s—I feel right. You must understand. You’re smarter than me—you know how dull it all is. How impossible everyone around is. It’s like suffocating waiting for them to work out the answer to a simple ‘how are you?’ The coke—it changes it. Makes it easier. Makes me feel less…more. You’ve got to understand.”

“Sherlock, I do understand. I simply do not agree. I am never going to agree. You’re kill—“

“No. You bastard! You sanctimonious, bullying, self-righteous bastard. What are you going to do? Lock me up and make me clean up? You can’t. Force me into rehab? I won’t go. You never understand! You never listen!”

Mycroft sat, still and unmoving in a vast wicker chair on the private treatment centre’s veranda. Sherlock, though, was a near-blur of activity—long legs scything as he paced the long, screened room looking over the lawns to the ocean beyond. His arms flailed. His curls were in constant motion as he gestured, rocked, gripped his skull, swung back to lean toward his older brother, arguing and accusing in equal measure, trying to pound his brother into agreement with the fire-hose rush of his own diatribe.

Mycroft, at thirty-five, was still only beginning to get a sense of how to consciously deal with his brother’s games. For most of his life he’d fallen before the passion, the sound, the fury Sherlock produced.

Still, he thought. Be still. Don’t rise to it. Don’t try to match him—you can’t. Wait him out. Look for the opening…

Five minutes later Sherlock slowed to draw a deep breath. Mycroft struck.

“Sherlock. Shut. Up.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. He huffed, then again drew in breath.

“No. What part of ‘shut up’ don’t you understand, little brother?”

“You bastard… Being older doesn’t make you better.”

“It makes me more experienced…especially with you and your nasty habits, and what they do. You nearly got Hemminway killed. She’s lucky to have got out of that mission alive.”

“If she’d listened to me…”

“You were stoned out of your mind, Sherlock. Of course she didn’t listen.”

“I was right.”

“Not that anyone could tell at the time. Especially when you were too gone to explain.”

“It’s your fault. You never team me with anyone good.”

“Sherlock, grow up. You are the one making the choices. You’re putting your partners in danger. You’re driving me half-mad. As for what you’re doing to Mummy and Father? You’re destroying them.”

“Oh, you should talk.” Sherlock growled. He paced toward Mycroft, a slow stalk, leopard-like.

It wasn’t fair, Mycroft thought. Sherlock was such a passionate, sexy beast. Not precisely pretty, in the ordinary sense, but beautiful, alien, elegant, intense. Like a fairy king or a fallen angel or an alien warrior arrived from a distant star. The spidery form, the hands and feet too large, the odd, canted eyes, the cheekbones sharp enough to shave oak…it all came together somehow with that deep, sonorous voice to present the world with something potent beyond all reason. How was anyone to stand against that?

He sat, still and unmoving, one leg crossed over the other, foot swinging free. Arms at ease on the arms of the chair. It never paid to let Sherlock see he’d rattled you…

“I’m not going to fight with you, Sherlock. I’ve made the arrangements. I’ve got the judge to sign off on sectioning you for the next six months. I’ve found the correct institution to keep you where I want you. When you’re off the sauce, we can talk. Unless you rant at me more, in which case you can stay where I put you another few months.”

“You can’t do that.”

Mycroft reined in the longing to argue back, to explain himself, to point out all the reasons he not only could, but had to do exactly that. Instead he shrugged, and examined his nails. “The van to take you to Greenbriar is outside. It will wait as long as this takes.”

“I won’t go.”

Mycroft didn’t say a thing. He glanced at the policeman with the warrant, the two private security guards, the four rehab attendants, the nurse with the injection ready on a tray, and the doctor who’d been willing to prescribe it for the most troublesome of patients. They all stirred slightly, ready for whatever would happen next.

“I won’t,” Sherlock said again. “I’ll fight, dammit.”

Mycroft looked at him, then, and asked, in the most calm of voices, “And what do you think that will gain you, beyond bruises and humiliation? You’re not fighting me this time, Sherlock. You can’t dislocate my shoulder or break my arm.”

“It was an accident.” Sherlock said it on automatic.

Of course he did…he had that line down before he was five…

“Which time?” Mycroft aimed the question like the quarrel of a crossbow, and let fly.

It hit home. Sherlock blanched. Mycroft took advantage of his brother’s sick guilt to say, “Really, you know better than to fight. You’ll only lose. And it’s for the best, after all. You’re out of control, little brother.”

“And you like nothing better than taking control,” Sherlock snapped back. But he was calmer than he’d been. More resigned. More aware that he’d lost already, and that there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t just make it worse.

“Of course I like control,” Mycroft said, almost amiably. “All said and done, I find it preferable. Now, I’m sorry, but they won’t transport you without the straitjacket. They’ve looked at your record, you see, and they have set ideas of what’s safe and what isn’t. You’re not.”

“I won’t wear it.”

Mycroft shrugged again, and made a small gesture toward the little army waiting behind him. “That or drugged and then straitjacketed. Your choice.”

“I’d rather go to prison,” Sherlock said, sounding more like Mycroft’s little baby brother by the second. His eyes filled, and he blinked the tears back in desperation.

Mycroft was never immune, much though he wished he was. Softly, he said, “No, brother-mine. You really wouldn’t. They’d…hurt you, there. It would all hurt you. Come, now. Make this easier on all of us.”

Of course, Sherlock couldn’t. Mycroft feared it was constitutional—ingrained, inherent, dictated by genes or brain chemistry or some unpredicted side-effect of a spoiled childhood. He growled, then lunged at Mycroft.

The policeman moved like a greased eel, blocking the younger man. He had one of Sherlock’s arms. He turned, ready to pull Sherlock down—but Sherlock was supple and sly as a serpent, and he fought free, then shot toward the wide screens that closed in the veranda, ready to rip through and run cross country if he had to. His hospital robes swirled around his shins as the policeman, the two hired guards, and the four attendants all piled on, pinning him to the wide wood floor.

The doctor murmured in the background. The nurse muttered her own agreement, and stepped forward. With help from the guards she found Sherlock’s arm, the turn of his elbow. She slipped the needle in and pushed the plunger home. It was only a few minutes after that the guards were able to climb off, and the attendants eased Sherlock into the straitjacket.

“Bastard,” Sherlock husked, glaring blearily at Mycroft.

Mycroft shook his head. “You’re the one making the choices, brother-mine. It’s not my fault they keep being such bad ones.” He turned to the two hired guards and the attendants. “You can take him to the van, now, yes?”

They located a wheelchair, piled Sherlock into it like a long, gawky baby giraffe loaded into a wheelbarrow. Soon they were gone. The policeman with the warrant remained, exchanging paperwork with the doctor who’d written the prescription.

Mycroft stayed where he was, sitting in the huge, comfortable wicker chair.

It was a nice centre, he thought. He’d picked a good place for Sherlock. The place he was going was nice, too—if more secure than here. Sherlock really would not prefer prison…

“Ready to go, sir?” the policeman asked, gently. He’d been a surprise—a real find. Mycroft had encountered him during a mixed MI5/MI6 project, and realized quickly what a powerful resource the man represented.

Mycroft nodded, silent, and rose. He took a last look out over the lawns, to the sea. Such a lovely view. The water was teal, dusted with gleaming whitecaps. There were sails picked out in many colors on the waves. He could see the white gulls wheel over the water. Something—he thought perhaps a dolphin—jumped high and dropped back into the choppy swells.

“It’s a very nice place, isn’t it, Sergeant Lestrade?”

“Lovely.” The man’s voice was amused, though, stating without words that, nice though the scenery was, it was still a nut house for junkies and neurotics. “If we’re going to get back to London by evening, we’d better start. My wife waits dinner for me often enough as it is. Rather not make her do it when I’m just the guy with the paperwork.”

Mycroft had to admit it was a fair request. He nodded, gave the wide ocean one last, longing glance, and turned away.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “I suspect when you honestly need a place like this, you’re in no condition to really appreciate how lovely it is. And when you can appreciate it, well—you’re probably well enough to go back to work.” He stepped out, then, letting his long legs put him in the lead, heading for the car park outside the centre.

As they passed out the wide front doors, he glanced over at the policeman.

“Do you ever recall our first…encounters?”

The policeman blushed and nodded. His face as a picture—it was as well his wife was back in London, or she’d have guessed far too much.

“Do you ever…regret it?”

The man shrugged. “Sometimes.” He glanced at Mycroft, and grinned. “Not much, to be honest. But it can’t happen again. I’m a married man.”

Mycroft sighed heavily. “I suppose.”

It would have been nice if Lestrade had been single, he thought. Dealing with Sherlock could be so shattering. Tonight, given his own choice, they’d pull over at the first comfortable motel, hire a room, and shag the misery out of Mycroft’s bones, leave him too high on his own climax to feel anything but lazy contentment. But he respected the policeman—the other agent—too much to try to manipulate him, and respected himself too much to sink that low.

“Very well,” he said as they reached the car. “Who drives first? You or I?”

“I’ve got the keys,” Lestrade said, amused, and eased into the driver’s seat. “You can pick the music, though. You make interesting picks.”

As Lestrade drove the car down the long graveled drive and out onto the main road, Mycroft riffled through his collection of music on his smartphone, hooked into the car speakers, and leaned back as Amal Brahim Djellou’s voice filled the car with the aching melancholy of Villa Lobos’ “Bachianas Brasilieros No.5.”

“Sweet,” Lestrade murmured. “Sad, but nice.”

“I’ve heard Sherlock play an adaptation on the violin,” Mycroft said. “It seemed fitting.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, and let the music cry for him.

 


End file.
